Tonight I combined the two somewhat distinct pleasures of reading the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and watching the trashy television show Britain’s Got Talent. I enjoyed both, but they were completely different types of pleasure. Bentham was intellectually stimulating, providing me with an interesting insight into the levels and meaning of happiness. It provided me with a basis to think philosophically and elaborated on intelligent and important life-issues. It is an enjoyment that I thrive in. I study philosophy due to this kind of enjoyment and thought-provoking ideas. It’s an enjoyment I experience time and time again and go out of my way to find this kind of enjoyment.
Britain’s Got Talent was completely different. The pantomime entertained me in an amusing and simplistic way. Booing and hissing at the acts I disliked, complimenting the acts I thought were good and acting dismayed with the opinions of the judges. It was Simple, tacky, entertainment, mass-packaged for instant and effortless enjoyment. I would never go out of my way to experience this, but feeling unwell and tired it was nice to relax to and lose my mind to senseless entertainment.
Bentham made an outrageous claim. He said that pleasure from ‘quality’ sources is a greater happiness than that from base pleasures. To read is a greater happiness than to laugh at a clown falling down a stair-case. I realised that today I coincidentally put his theory to the test. I experienced happiness from reading philosophy and happiness watching a base form of entertainment. Both made me happy, but was the former happiness better than the latter?
To me it was. It was a happiness I enjoy looking for, find interesting to delve into and time and time again will enjoy considering. After-all I wouldn’t even be writing this if it weren’t for Bentham. I got instant ‘canned’ happiness from Britain’s Got Talent, but it’s is like the buzz from drinking red bull. It’s a sudden, fast, immediate rush of happiness that leaves as fast as it arrives. I found it a lesser happiness.
This begs an important question, is this the case just to me, or is it across the board? There are plenty of people who look forward to shows like Britain’s Got Talent much like I look forward to learning from philosophical texts. Maybe to our Britain’s Got Talent fan watching these shows gives them a proper, lasting, and instilling happiness that is akin to the happiness I get from philosophy. Or perhaps our Britain’s Got Talent fan is missing out in the type of happiness I can experience, perhaps this person only knows the fizzy pop happiness I experienced this evening when watching the show.
Bentham is certainly correct with regards to people like myself who enjoy these ‘loftier’ pleasures. Perhaps though to people who do not Bentham is incorrect.
It's funny how you mention reading philosophy at the higher end of Bentham's felicific calculus when Bentham believed philosophy to be as arbituary as something such as Britain's Got Talent.
ReplyDelete"I would not go so far as to bow to pick up a book on philosophy".
He also didn't like poetry as he felt that 'pushpin equals poetry' (the idea that poetry was of the same use as the game of pushpin). I assume this would mean he would not see music in the range of his 'quality over quanity' ideology, so therefore I'd be fucked. He was a right cunt.